parenting self-efficacy

The present study was conducted with the aim of comparing the effectiveness of group therapy based on reality therapy and group therapy based on acceptance and commitment on the self-efficacy of parenting of adoptive couples of orphaned welfare children.

This research was practical in terms of purpose and in terms of semi-experimental method with two experimental groups and one control group, in which a pre-test-post-test design with follow-up was used. From among all adoptive couples referring to the welfare organization of Tehran city in 2023, 45 people were selected using available sampling method and randomly assigned to three groups (two experimental groups and one control group). The first experimental group received group therapy based on reality-therapy for 10 sessions and the second experimental group received group therapy based on acceptance and commitment for 10 sessions. The participants of all three groups completed the parenting self-efficacy scale of Dumka et al. (1996) in the pre-test, post-test and follow-up stages. The obtained findings were analyzed using ANOVA with repeated measures and Bonferroni's post hoc test in SPSS-26 software.

The results of covariance analysis showed that there is a significant difference between the scores of the control and experimental groups (P<0.001). Compared to the control group, the experimental groups improved the parenting self-efficacy of adoptive couples of welfare orphans. Although there was no significant difference between the two experimental approaches; But the effect of therapy based on acceptance and commitment was slightly higher than reality therapy.

Group therapies based on reality therapy and based on acceptance and commitment have significant effectiveness in improving the self-efficacy of parenting of adoptive couples of orphaned welfare children. Therefore, experts, researchers and therapists in this field can use these interventions, especially treatment based on acceptance and commitment, as effective options to improve the self-efficacy of these people.

Undoubtedly, the birth and presence of an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) child in any family is an unpleasant and challenging event and prevents the performing of the parent's normal functions. Mothers of children with special needs, especially ASD, experience more psychological problems. There is much evidence that mothers of these children experience higher levels of general anxiety than mothers of other exceptional children. Frustration and deprivation due to the child's abnormality cause isolation, disinterest in relating to the environment, low self-esteem, a feeling of worthlessness, and low parenting self-efficacy. Eventually, this situation causes depression and endangers the mother's mental health. The present research aimed to compare the effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy with coping strategies training on increasing self-esteem and parenting self-efficacy in mothers of ASD children.

The quasi-experimental study has a pretest-posttest and follow-up design with a control group. The study population consisted of all mothers whose children were treated and educated in ASD education centers in Booshehr City, Iran. In total, 30 willing and volunteered to participate in the study were selected and randomly assigned to three groups (acceptance and commitment therapy, coping strategies training, and control group, each group was 10 people). The experimental groups participated in 8 sessions once a week for eight continuous weeks, while the control group did not receive treatment. The inclusion criteria included not having severe physical illness and maternal psychosis, having a child with ASD being treated and studying in one of the educational centers for children with autism, and having at least primary education for mothers. The exclusion criteria were the symptoms of mental disorder during the training session, and receiving psychiatric treatment and, having a history of receiving cognitive-behavioral training, absence from two or more sessions in the intervention program. The instruments for gathering required data consisted of Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965) and Parenting Self-Efficacy Scale (Dumka et al., 1996). The obtained data were analyzed at the level of descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (repeated measure analysis of variance and Bonferroni's post hoc test) at the significant level of 0.05 in SPSS version 16 software.

Results showed that acceptance and commitment therapy and coping strategies training significantly improved mothers' self-esteem and parenting self-efficacy in the experimental groups compared to the control group (p<0.001). The effect of both interventions was significant from the pretest to the posttest (p<0.001) and from the pretest to follow-up (p<0.001). But it was not significant from the posttest to the follow-up (p>0.05). Also, no significant difference was observed between the average scores of the experimental groups in the variables of self-esteem (p=0.668) and parenting self-efficacy (p=0.056).

According to the study findings, both interventions are effective in increasing self-esteem and parenting self-efficacy, and there is no significant difference between the effectiveness of these two interventions. Therefore, therapists can use these two therapeutic and educational approaches, especially acceptance and commitment therapy, a new wave of cognitive-behavioral treatments.

 

Autism spectrum disorder is a pervasive neurological disorder that affects many aspects of childhood development. This disorder is known as the most unknown and severe childhood disorder. According to the fifth edition of the Guidance and Diagnosis and Statistics of Mental Disorders (2013), the criteria for diagnosing typhoid disorder include two main areas: first, the field of interaction and social communication, and second: limited and repetitive interests and activities (2). The occurrence of this disorder not only affects the psychological and social processes of children but also the occurrence of this problem causes psychological damage to the family and parents, especially mothers. Studies show that parents of children with pervasive autism disorders are more exposed to stress due to having disabled children than parents of children with other psychological disorders. However, screening results show that the prevalence of autism in Iran is about 77 per 10,000 children. Differences in the conditions of children with autism spectrum disorder compared to normal children who grow normally, also affect the parenting process. The results of a study conducted by Weiss et al. (2013) showed: high levels of anxiety, depression, decreased physical and mental health Behavioral problems of children with disorders, chronic and complex nature of the disease are among the factors that affect maternal parenting adequacy and this feeling of inadequacy and inadequacy in controlling the situation eventually leads to a decrease in parenting self-efficacy (8). Parenting self-efficacy refers to a parent's assessment of his or her abilities in the role of caregiver and refers to a parent's beliefs and judgments about his or her ability to organize and perform a range of child-related tasks. Parenting is very complex and parents try to do it in the best possible way.In other words, whenever there is a problem in the parent-child relationship, the parents blame themselves and question their competencies as a parent. The research literature on Autism Spectrum Disorder indicates that the main focus of research so far has been on people with the disorder and that less attention has been paid to the need for supportive and psychological interventions for parents, especially mothers; Also, with the advent of the second and third waves of psychology, the importance of addressing issues related to positive psychology has increased. Does psychological superiority fit with the experimental model?

The research method was descriptive-correlation with the modeling approach of structural equations and the statistical population included all mothers with children with autism spectrum disorder in Tehran in 1399, which was estimated to be 900 people. In the present study, 380 eligible mothers were selected from the mentioned statistical population by available sampling method, considering the probability of falling. After executing and deleting the distorted questionnaires and hypert data, information about 362 people entered the final analysis. Criteria for inclusion of mothers in the study include having literacy education, willingness to cooperate in research, having at least one child with autism spectrum disorder in the age group of 7 to 18 years, no acute physical and mental problems and exclusion criteria include: specific physical problem in The length of the research was the unwillingness to continue to participate in the research, the completion of incomplete and distorted questionnaires and the lack of cooperation from participating in the research. In this study, in order to measure mental vitality, the state mental vitality scale (Ryan and Frederick, 1997) was used, which measures a person's current energy and vitality. This scale has 7 items, it is scored on a 5 point Likert scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). The scores on this scale range from 7 to 35, and the second question is scored in reverse. The Parenting Self-Efficacy Questionnaire was introduced by Dumka et al. (1996). The answer to this questionnaire is graded according to the weekly Likert scale from 1 to 7. Questions 1 - 3 - 5 - 6-8 in the questionnaire are scored in reverse. The low score of the questionnaire is 10, the average score is 4 and the high score is 7. Scores between 10 and 20 indicate low self-efficacy. Scores between 20 and 40 indicate moderate parenting and scores above 40 indicate high parenting self-efficacy. The 12-item multidimensional questionnaire was developed by Zimmet, Dahlem, and Farley (1988), and included perceptions of social support adequacy in three sources: family with Articles 3, 4, 8, and 11, friends with Articles 6, 7, 9, and 12. And measures others with Articles 1, 2, 5, and 10 on a weekly scale ranging from strongly disagree = 1 to strongly agree = 7. The results of the study by Zimet et al. (1988) showed that this tool has a validity and reliability for measuring perceived social support. The Kubasa Hardness Test (1982) was developed by Kubasa et al to measure cognitive stiffness. This test consists of 20 four-choice questions (never, rarely, sometimes and often)

After analyzing the results, the obtained results showed that the structural model of the research fits well are related with the collected data and parenting self-efficacy both directly and positively (β = 0.306, p = 0.001) and indirectly due to psychological hardiness (0.07).β, p = 0.001), as well as perceived social support directly and positively (β = 0.094, p = 0.100) and indirectly due to psychological hardiness (β = 0.306, p = 0.001) with subjective vitality of mothers with children with autism spectrum disorder .

Stubbornness is a fundamental sense of control that allows the stubborn person to draw and access a list of strategies. Ultimately, stubbornness develops an optimistic view of stressors; In other words, the trait of fighting enables the stubborn person to consider even unpleasant events as a potential threat to safety, and all these aspects prevent or shorten the duration of negative stressful consequences, and in fact Stubbornness is a shield against intense physiological arousal due to stressful events, which is considered by other researchers as a factor of vulnerability to diseases. Psychological stubbornness acts as a moderator of the relationship between stress and psychological and physical illness. People with strong psychological toughness are less likely to suffer physical or psychological harm than people with poor psychological resilience in response to stress. Experimental findings also confirm the moderating role of psychological toughness in comparison with stress lateral pressures. Other findings indicate that there is no significant difference between the two sexes in terms of psychological toughness. According to the obtained results, it can be concluded that in order to increase the vitality and mental vitality of Iranian mothers with children with autism spectrum disorders, they should be identified and mothers' correct perception of supportive resources should be increased. Self-efficacy and parenting competence. Therefore, mental health professionals should put support programs for mothers at the top of mental health programs in the community to increase vitality and mental well-being. One of the limitations of this research is available sampling. Another limitation is that the statistical population of the research is limited to Tehran, which limits the decision to generalize the research results. According to the results obtained from research, it is suggested that research be conducted with the aim of psychological empowerment of parents, especially mothers, with an emphasis on promoting their mental vitality and well-being; Future research should also examine other predictive factors that may play a role in promoting mental vitality; Considering that the living conditions of other family members with children are the same as those of mothers affected by the disorders of the child, it is also recommended to study the indicators related to well-being and mental vitality in fathers and sisters.

Traumatic events such as divorce play an important role in causing alexithymia in children and parental self-efficacy. Attachment-based play therapy focuses simultaneously on the child's emotions and parental effectiveness.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of attachment-based play therapy on alexithymia of children and their mother’s parental self-efficacy in divorced family in Tehran in covid-19 pandemic.

The present study is a quasi-experimental design with pretest, posttest, follow-up group. The statistical population of this study was mothers and their children in divorced families in Tehran in 1400 who responded positively to the invitation for cooperation in the present study in virtual networks. A total of 48 sample (24 children and 24 mothers) were selected by convenience sampling and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental groups received 10 sessions of attachment-based play therapy training but the control group did not receive any intervention. The collected data were analyzed using ANOVA with repeated measure. Results The results showed that attachment-based play therapy improved emotional malaise and its components in children and increased their mothers' parenting self-efficacy (P <0.01).

According to the results, attention to this approach in treatment programs and counseling as an effective method to reduce emotional distress in children and increase maternal self-efficacy of parents in divorced families can be useful

The previous studies in Iran and around the world show the high consumption of psychiatric and addictive drugs.  In this regard, the university students are at high risk of substance abuse. The purpose of this study was the assessment of the association between the use of psychiatric drugs and addictive substances and related factors among medical students of Azad University in Zahedan. This cross-sectional study was carried out on 260 students that were selected using stratified random sampling. The data were collected using interview and registered in questionnaire. The subjects were asked about history, type and method of prescription for consumption of psychiatric drugs, history of referring to psychologist and conditions for using addictive drugs. Data were analyzed in Stata.14 using chi square test and multiple logistic regression with Odds Ratios. The prevalence of using psychiatric and addictive drugs was 35% and 27.7%, respectively. The consumption of psychiatric drugs was related to using addictive drugs, history of referring to psychologist, sex and marital status (P<0.05).On the other hand, the use of addictive drugs was related to sex, field of study, living place and having smoker friends (P<0.05). As compared with previous studies, the use of these drugs among university students of medical sciences is relatively high. It seems that   providing themedical students with proper consultation  and those  with history of referring to  psychiatrist and also students that live in private houses (rather than shared dormitories) can decrease the use of addictive  substances, especially smoking and psychiatric drugs without prescription among the university students.

The experiences of the first years of life and the interaction style between mother with the child, specifies the foundation of child's health or illness in adulthood. Parenting styles and self-efficacy of mothers are two important factors that can affect child's anxiety. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the role of mother's self-efficacy and parenting style in predicting the anxiety of preschool children (5 and 6 years old) in Mashhad. Current study is a descriptive correlational study. The statistical population of this study included mothers of preschool children in kindergartens of Mashhad who were selected by random cluster sampling. The sample size in this study was 181 people. Three scales used in this study were self-efficacy of Dumka (PSAM), Baumrind Parenting styles and Spence scale of preschool children anxiety (PAS). SPSS (23) software was used for data analysis. Low self-efficacy of the mother and her authoritarian parenting style can predict child's anxiety. There was a negative and significant correlation between self-efficacy of mothers and child anxiety (P≤0.006, r=-0.2); there was also a negative and significant correlation between mother's self-efficacy and authoritarian parenting style (P≤0.001, r=-0.24); the relationship between child anxiety and authoritarian parenting style was positive and significant (P≤0.001, r=0.23). The obtained results showed that the authoritarian parenting style and low self-efficacy have the ability to predict child's anxiety; therefore, it is suggested to consider modification of parenting style and increasing the self-efficacy of mothers in maternal empowerment programs.